


The Pursuit of Knowledge

by shaggydogstail



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: scarvesnhats, Fluff, Humour, M/M, Obliviousness, Sirius Black Being Ridiculous, Sort Of, intellectual curiosity, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 20:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12176106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shaggydogstail/pseuds/shaggydogstail
Summary: There are precisely ten things worth knowing that Sirius Black doesn't already know.





	The Pursuit of Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for scarvesnhats on lj. The prompt was: _what makes the leaves change colour?_

Sirius Black was a bright boy, but there are some things even he didn’t know. This troubled Sirius, because he didn’t like not knowing things; it made him feel like he was missing something. James teased him about it sometimes, saying that one day his curiosity would get him into trouble, but Sirius brushed it off and said that day came in their first year when they got a month’s detention for trying to find out if it’s possible to brew Firewhisky using ingredients stolen from Slughorn’s potions cabinet. (The answer, so far, is no, though they’ve kept on trying it every year since.)

James tried to deflate Sirius’ egoistic claims to intellectual superiority, saying that there were probably millions of things Sirius didn’t know, and never would. Sirius retorted that when it came to matters of any real import, there were precisely ten things he didn’t know. To illustrate the point, he made a list:

 

1\. Why leaves change colour in autumn. ( _And why only some leaves do, and always on the same trees, every year. Sirius sometimes felt sorry for pine trees, having to stay green all the time, never even getting a shot at glorious red and gold._ )

2\. Why Regulus is such an unbearable snot. ( _Because he wasn’t always, not really. Or maybe Sirius didn’t notice it before. He wondered which it was._ )

3\. Who would win in a fight: a pixie or a doxy? ( _Sirius was confident that the pixie would win, but he couldn’t PROVE it, and that troubled him._ )

4\. Whether dogs can jump higher than humans. ( _Proportionate to their size of course— Sirius believed in fair competition._ )

5\. What that strange smell was coming from Peter’s bed. ( _It really isn’t a normal smell at all, not even by the lax standards of teenage boys._ )

6\. The difference between currants, raisins and sultanas. ( _Because they are all dried grapes, and how is it possible that dried grapes can taste so different?_ )

7\. Why James always acted like such an idiot whenever Lily was around. ( _More so than usual, that was._ )

8\. What it’s like to spend more than a week without getting a detention. ( _He worried, sometimes, that it was eating into his valuable time a little too much._ )

9\. If a tree falls in the forest, and no-one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise? ( _Sirius liked to think of himself as something of a philosopher._ )

10\. What it would be like to kiss Remus Lupin. ( _He left this one off the list he showed to James, because he had a feeling James might laugh at him. Instead, he made up some rubbish about how many Ice Mice he could fit in his mouth at once._ )

Being the inquisitive sort, Sirius embarked on a thorough exploration of all these questions. (In fact, he liked to think of it as his own personal quest.) He achieved varying degrees of success:

1\. Professor Sprout explained the leaf thing—something to do with chlorophyll and deciduous and evergreen trees. It was pretty disappointing, really. Sirius preferred the story about Merlin’s Switching Spells his favourite nanny told him when he was four.

2\. Sirius tried asking his brother why he was such an unbearable snot, but only got further evidence what he was an unbearable snot, which didn’t really help with the question of _why_. He tried to reason it out logically. At first he thought it might be his parents, as Regulus’ most disgusting behaviour usually revolved around mimicking Dad or sucking up to Mum. The only problem with that idea was that Sirius had exactly the same parents as Regulus, and he was pretty sure _he_ wasn’t an unbearable snot.

Eventually, he decided it was down to choice of friends. Sirius’ friends were bloody brilliant, whereas Regulus hung around with a bunch of Slytherin weirdos. Sirius liked this explanation very much, as it meant that Snivellus was partly to blame, which was always a gratifying thought.

3\. Sirius provoked a fight in the middle of the Forbidden Forest by telling the pixies that the doxies had been stealing their act, and telling the doxies that the pixies had called them a bunch of ugly looking fairies.

The ensuing fight wasn’t pretty, but Sirius won three galleons from James, so he was very happy.

4\. Sirius used himself as test subject for the dog versus human jumping competition, and enlisted the help of his friends to take measurements. He put chalk on his hands (or paws, when he was a dog of course) and jumped up against the wall of the South Tower, then measured the distance between the standing chalk marks and the jumping chalk marks.

He was quite surprised to find it was a victory for humans, though the chalk dust made him sneeze when he was a dog, which probably didn’t help.

5\. On reflection, Sirius decided that he actually _didn’t_ want to know what that smell was coming from under Peter’s bed. The universe ought to contain some mysteries.

6\. Was the hardest one. He looked up ‘currant,’ ‘raisin’ and ‘sultana’ in the dictionary, but that didn’t help at all. He tried asking the House Elves in the kitchen, who were most distraught that they didn’t know either, though they did supply him with a number of fruit scones (much needed brain food). He owled Mrs Potter, who replied that she wouldn’t give a currant house room, but failed to elaborate on precisely why.

Sirius was starting to worry that he’d found a question which he’d never be able to answer, which was very frightening, especially because of all the gloating he’d have to put up with from James. He sat up late into the night fretting about it, staring into the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room and waiting for inspiration to strike. Inspiration singularly failed to strike, and he was so late getting back to the dorm that Remus came looking for him. When he confessed his dilemma, Remus frowned and said that raisins tasted nicer than currants, and sultanas tasted nicer than raisins, which Sirius decided was a brilliant answer.

7\. Sirius took the obvious approach again and asked James why he always acted like such an idiot whenever Lily was around. James scowled and said he did no such thing, and it was cheating to even have that as a question on his list in the first place.

He tried asking Lily, and she said he _was_ an idiot, and you’re not much better, Black, so do me a favour and shove off.

Next he thought he’d ask everyone who knew James well what they thought. Peter said he didn’t think James did anything particularly idiotic around Lily, which just went to show how much he knew. He asked Professor McGonagall, who gave him a night’s detention on the basis that if he wasn’t actually doing something wrong he was planning it.

He really wanted to ask Remus what he thought, but Remus seemed to think that just because they had mock O.W.L.s the following week he should be trying to learn coursework instead of plunging into life’s great unanswered mysteries, and was avoiding him. He wasn’t sure why he expected Remus to know anything about it, since he didn’t have a girlfriend either, but somehow he felt sure that Remus would be able to help him where matters of the heart where concerned.

In the end he had to set off the school fire alarms during a rainstorm, so that the entire castle was evacuated and Remus had to leave the library. He also stole and hid Remus’ hooded robes, so that Remus was forced to share Sirius' umbrella.

Remus seemed pretty cross about the whole thing, but he did say he thought James was just trying to get Lily’s attention. Sirius thought it was a bit pointless, because whenever he got her attention she was really annoyed with him. Remus agreed that it was fairly stupid, but said that being in love drove people to ridiculous extremes sometimes, which made Sirius glad _he_ wasn’t pining over any soppy girls.

8\. It was bloody hard work managing to avoid detention for a whole week (James insisted that weeks during the school holidays didn’t count, and anyway, Sirius had never lasted one of them without being grounded, which was much the same thing.) He did manage it, though, and spent most evenings helping Remus make a model of the Quidditch Pitch out of sweets for James’ birthday. It was brilliant, actually, and more than made up for the fact that no fewer than six people who desperately wanted hexing had been let off with a withering stare that week.

9\. Sirius enchanted a saw to slowly cut down one of the saplings in the Forbidden Forest, and then sent Peter to observe what happened in rat form. Peter said it did make a noise, so that answered that one. Remus said he thought that wasn’t exactly the point of the question, and Sirius told him to shush, because he knew that, but he was pretty sure James didn’t. James looked a bit dubious, but let it slide, though he did say Sirius should have used the Philosopher’s Axe to cut the tree down.

10\. This was not a question which could be answered by theoretical means, as Sirius had no intention of relying on other people’s opinions about Remus’ kissing abilities. No, he was going to have to take the practical approach and kiss Remus himself.

Which he did.

It was actually rather disappointing—Remus squeaked and pushed him away, and demanded to know what in the name of bloody hell Sirius thought he was doing. Sirius didn’t think it was fair to judge Remus on just the one kiss when Remus wasn’t even expecting it, so he tried it again. The second time was better, but still not that great because Remus kept squirming and Sirius was worried that he was trying to get away from him.

So he tried again.

The third time Remus was still squirming but Sirius was certain he wasn’t trying to get away, and decided that kissing Remus was the best thing ever, like everything good rolled up into a great big ball of wonderful and covered in jam. Maybe even better.

The only downside to answering the tenth and final question on his list was that Sirius suddenly had a whole load of new questions, all of which involved Remus. Luckily for him, Remus also had a very inquiring mind and was very happy to help him answer them all.

He never did find out about the Ice Mice, though.

**Author's Note:**

> The difference between sultanas, raisins, and currants remains a debate for the ages, as evidenced by [this extensive discussion](https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-3680,00.html) in the Guardian.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://shaggydogstail.tumblr.com/) if you've got the answers to this, or any of life's other pressing questions.


End file.
